Imagining Terror in an Era of Globalization: U.S. Foreign Policy and the Construction of Terrorism after 9/11

Abstract

Many analyses of U.S. foreign policy after September 11 have rested upon readings of the U.S. as a traditional imperialist power. In so doing, the constructions of Al Qaeda as a decentralized corporation and a virtual network are often ignored. Corporate and network constructions place less stress on conventional threats to the nation-state and instead portray terrorism in distinctively post-Fordist terms. This in turn helps explain the short-lived and partial patriotic responses to the terrorist attacks, as well as the contradictory place of race in portrayals of the threat facing the U.S. Together these discourses point to new ways of thinking about U.S. nationalism and terrorism in the twenty-first century.

International trade and cyber conflict: Decomposing the effect of trade on state-sponsored cyber attacks

“…The United States, for instance, has been a dominant global force economically, militarily, and politically since the end of the Cold War. In pursuit of its continued dominance, the United States has adopted a proactive foreign policy, particularly in the years following the 9/11 terrorist attacks (Oliver, 2007; Scott, 2009). In addition to its efforts to contain terrorist threats, it has tried to rescue troubled states, intervening militarily in Libya, Somalia, and Haiti, among others.…”

Introduction

“…Any claim to newness, whether of an imperial regime or of historical circumstances, should be met with fair suspicion. Catherine Scott (2009) notes the majority of scholarship has placed the War on Terror and its associated machinery within a continuity of a long history of American foreign policy "defined by over two hundred years of self-imputed benevolence and a missionary complex" (579). However homologous contemporary conceptions of global American power might be with prior forms, it is clear that something has shifted in the idioms and technologies by which state actors (whether the United States or its "strategic allies") engage what comes to be deemed extralegal violence.…”